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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25122283">Bitter Medicine</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefeastandthefast/pseuds/thefeastandthefast'>thefeastandthefast</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hyena (TV 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Consensual Kink, F/M, Light BDSM, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Rough Sex, Spanking, Spoilers through episode 8, What happens after THAT KISS</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:14:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,527</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25122283</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefeastandthefast/pseuds/thefeastandthefast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"He closes his eyes. He would rather be gentle waves she could rock into, a quiet harbor for the night. He would rather flush away all the harshness in her life and fill it to the brim with sweetness. But he knows now that the bitter medicine has a power that the sweet has not.</p><p>If this is what she needs, he will comply."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jung Geumja/Yoon Heejae</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Bitter Medicine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>In case y'all want musical accompaniment to this story, here's what I had on repeat writing this thing:</p><p>Rings a Bell - Allie X<br/>Dirty Feeling - Lolawolf<br/>我爱 (Ready For Love) - Tia Ray<br/>Two Weeks - FKA twigs<br/>Sensual World - Kate Bush<br/>Akuma - Macaroom<br/>Holy Room - Somi</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>People had always told Heejae that he was lucky, that life was just naturally sweeter for someone like him. Gi-hyeok, his former classmates at the institute, the poor overworked stooges at the prosecutor’s office. It had occasionally irked, as if his hard work had counted for little. Sometimes he’d felt the need to protest a little, as a matter of principle. </p><p>But if he was being honest, he hadn’t cared. He knew that the opinions of most people had no power over him.</p><p>Yoon Heejae knew who he was and the family legacy he was working to uphold.</p><p>Or so he thought, until the day a merciless stranger wearing his girlfriend’s face and watch showed up to pull apart and rearrange the viscera of his life with gold-bedecked fingers. </p><p>In the courtroom that day, he had been reduced to a creature of panic and horror, trapped in what felt like a waking nightmare. It wasn’t a nightmare, though. He had chased her down next to her offensively jaunty red sedan, demanding answers. </p><p>All her answers had the relentless logic of reality.  </p><p>The quiet look of triumph as she slid her card into the pocket over his heart, with a soft pat. <i>We’ll meet each other again when you’re ready to settle.</i></p><p>No, it wasn’t a nightmare, it was just a taste of life he’d never had before. It was bitter and it fucking hurt going down.</p><p>He had lain sleepless that night, remembering the last time she had touched him, two evenings before Ha Chanho’s divorce hearing. Heesun was supposedly departing on a business trip to the States. She had placed both hands flat on his chest, kissed him slowly, thoroughly, seemingly savoring the goodbye. </p><p>Heejae had believed that the wistful smile and wave she gave him as she ducked into her cab was a promise. Really, it had been a farewell. At least, damn his sentimentality, that’s what he had hoped it was. </p><p>It could also have just been one last tranquilizer dart until she was ready to go in for the kill. The bitterness bubbled up again like brackish water.</p><p>And then there was the night the cheongju had loosened his tie and his tongue and he couldn’t resist asking her if she had felt something real. The physical distance between them, enforced by Yu-mi’s passed out form, had given him a small measure of clarity he hadn’t previously been able to maintain in Jung Geumja’s presence. </p><p>He was going to get a straight answer and he was going to take it like a man. </p><p>But of course, <i>that</i> particular dose of brutal Jung Geumja honesty had kept him writhing for weeks. Every time he found his gaze drifting over to her office, he had wanted to shake her until she said something nice to hear and kiss her until she slapped him hard. They were separated by a couple of glass walls and a hallway, but somehow it felt like a chasm.</p><p>---</p><p>Since that day, he’s kept a running mental catalogue of every interaction; every touch, every look. He finds himself playing a ridiculous game of spot-the-difference with each carefully filed entry. </p><p>He holds every shimmering memory of Heesun up to the light, examining front and back, comparing each with every high-definition encounter with Jung Geumja.</p><p><i>You need to let it go.</i> </p><p><i>I love you &lt;3 </i>(somehow he can’t bear to erase those messages.)</p><p>
  <i>I was never sincere with you.</i>
</p><p><i>I liked working with you.</i> The crinkle of her nose when she smiles.</p><p><i>It hurts to see that look of despair on your face.</i> The smug, slow curl of her lips.</p><p>
  <i>I have faith in you now.</i>
</p><p>He dissects the pure rush of satisfaction from the quick squeeze of her hand after they had clinched the victory for D&amp;T. Heejae compares it to the simple sweetness of Heesun’s soft fingers intertwined with his, walking to the neighborhood café. </p><p>He slides a finger between collar and neck, tugging for a bit of breathing room. </p><p>Frustrating. Unreconcilable. It’s a game that he can never win, but one that he plays assiduously anyway. </p><p>And the more he plays, the more he finds himself drawn perversely back to the distilled sting of Jung Geumja. He’s addicted now.</p><p>---</p><p>Her body feels different under his shaking hands. This is the first time he’s touched her like this since she was Heesun. </p><p>No- he realizes, he has <i>never</i> touched her like this, not even when she was Heesun. The Heejae who wooed Heesun had been banished with the words <i>this night never happened.</i>  </p><p>With Geumja’s demanding mouth on his, there is no strength for courtesy, no breath for finesse. Having stripped him of his jacket and undone most of his buttons, she has him pinned against the door with the insistent press of her body and her possessive hands. </p><p>He is sloppy now, rootless, desperate to memorize the feel of her, from the jut of her shoulder blades to the dip of her lower back, all before his brain can catch up. They move together as a single organism hurtling towards a horizontal surface, any horizontal surface, as she guides his hands down over the swell of her ass, down further so he knows where to grasp, his fingers gripping the edge of the heat at her center.</p><p>He sweeps a messy arc over her desk, clearing everything off with one arm, half blind with the imperative of getting his tongue into all the soft secretive corners of her mouth. Geumja pushes him away hard, her eyes flicking over the piles of files and pens scattered on the floor. She looks pointedly at him, brow lifted, mouth amused.</p><p>“…I can clean it up later,” Heejae offers, suddenly a little embarrassed. </p><p>She huffs a laugh and says nothing, only coils her hand in his shirt and yanks him close again. The next time they part, to suck in ragged breaths, her eyes are unfocused and her parted lips are richly swollen, glistening in the dim light. </p><p>A flash of pride shoots through him, only to be overtaken by a near crippling ache when he sees her stumble a little backing up against her desk. He steadies her and crushes her body against his, as if it were possible to squeeze away every last trace of the fear and shame she’s shown him tonight. </p><p><i>You are Jung Geumja. You could never be defeated</i>, he thinks desperately. He embraces her, wishing he could pour molten steel back into the marrow of her bones by sheer force of will.</p><p>He is breathless with wonder that she is letting him try.  </p><p>---</p><p>Yoon Heejae folds his long body down between her legs like he’s offering obeisance, the hustler queen of Song &amp; Kim, enthroned on her mahogany desk. She knows this is what he had wanted to do with Heesun those months ago and what she hadn’t allowed. </p><p>He drops his lips to her knee, steady eyes meeting hers. “So you’re finally letting me do this?” </p><p>He says then, simply, “Jung Geumja.” Quiet but clear.</p><p>His mouth fluttering against her skin, for emphasis. <i>Of course he would; he’s shameless.</i> </p><p>She nods. She just wants to feel something tonight. To be submerged in something other than the whirlpool of shame threatening to pull her under.

</p><p> And if her desire has made her selfish even while seeing how Heejae’s desire has made him abject, then so be it. </p><p>He pulls her to the edge of her desk by the hips, in one smooth movement, pushing her back onto her elbows. Shivers fan out from her core as she watches him: so still at first, eyes shut as if in meditation. Then he nestles his face against the softness of her inner thigh, his hands gliding along the sensitive undersides. He presses his nose, his flickering eyelids, his cheekbones to her skin, inhaling her like she’s pure oxygen. </p><p>He hauls both legs over his shoulders and laces his fingers over her hips, giving her his slow half-smile, eyes locked on to hers. Geumja is anguished with need by the time the palpable warmth of his breath finally, <i>finally</i> hovers over her cunt. </p><p>Yoon Heejae experiments with languid passes at first, his tongue tracing slow arabesques. She strains against his grip, desperate for more contact, but he muscles her down without a word or breaking the rhythm of his increasingly relentless campaign to keep her near-cresting and out of her mind. </p><p>The restraint fills her with a terrified thrill.</p><p>She can’t look at him. The dangerously full dam inside her would collapse if she lets herself watch his face as he takes her apart.</p><p>Geumja is quiet, by habit, but Heejae listens for the stuttered breath, feels the tautening muscles of her thighs, that always anticipated Heesun’s climax. He releases her hips, sliding two fingers into her as she arches against his mouth with a moan, riding and riding the waves. </p><p>It isn’t until she coasts to a calm that she realizes that her face is wet with tears.</p><p>He pulls her up, tries to gather her into his arms, to kiss the tears away, gentle as summer rain, but all of it feels somehow wrong. She pushes him away to look him square in the face. </p><p>“Fuck me. I want you to make it hurt,” she says, eyes hollowed out but serious, tears still gleaming in the dim.</p><p>Comprehension dawns uneasy. Geumja places a careful hand on his cheek, thumb against his lower lip to quiet his protest. “This is how I want to use you.”</p><p>Heejae says nothing. But as always, his face is an open book to her and she knows she will have to insist.</p><p>“Make it hurt. Be rough. I’ll snap my fingers if I want you to stop. But don’t stop unless I do.”</p><p>He closes his eyes. He would rather be gentle waves she could rock into, a quiet harbor for the night. He would rather flush away all the harshness in her life and fill it to the brim with sweetness. But he knows now that the bitter medicine has a power that the sweet has not. </p><p>If this is what she needs, he will comply. </p><p>He takes a deep breath and stands. Turns her by the waist and pushes her roughly over the desk, grasping her right wrist behind her back. A gasp bursts from Geumja, excited and a little frightened. She doesn’t resist. Instead widens her stance and braces herself, left palm flat on the desk. </p><p>She waits, hungry, for the click glide slither sound of him shedding his belt. She wants to be impaled, to have him overwhelm the ache inside of her with a more shapeable pain, haul her bodily into mental oblivion. </p><p><i>Hurry</i>, she thinks. He runs the backs of slow fingers against her, making her shiver, wet with anticipation. The sudden force of his entry wrenches a hiss of satisfaction from her. He tortures her with five strokes up to the hilt before leaving her bereft. </p><p>Before she can protest, the sudden hot sting of his palm across her backside takes her breath away. He follows with another strike, then another. He shoves into her again, hard and merciless, her hipbones sharp against the edge of her desk. </p><p>She struggles, her body’s instinct to fight colliding with the keen insistence of arousal. There’s no escape from the battering, and so she wills herself to surrender, spreads her trembling legs farther apart, opening herself more. He pulls her away from the edge, shoves the hand in his grip down between her legs, pressing all her fingers and all of his on her throbbing clit. She feels him making a mess of her, filling then emptying her with equal intensity. </p><p>There’s no room for thought in this onslaught, only pain and pleasure, the unendurable made ecstatic.</p><p>He releases her, pulls out; the dark rent only by their harsh breathing. She waits, a little terrified for the next strike to fall, buttocks pulsating and raw. But this time, she gets only the relief of light fingertips floating over tender skin. </p><p>He lifts her up by the shoulders, until his lips graze the skin behind her ear. He drops a kiss there, one arm slung lightly but firmly across her throat, the other pressing her bare ass against the slick heat of his erection.  </p><p>“You liked that?” Heejae’s voice is rough, buzzing against her ear.</p><p>Geumja groans, impatient, desperate.</p><p>“Tell me.” </p><p>“I liked it when you held me down. I liked it when you... made me fight you.” Geumja hates losing control, hates losing in general, but the wild beating of her heart right here and now feels like a kind of delirious freedom.   </p><p>He caresses her collarbones and then wraps one hand around the base of her throat as he pushes into her again, the other cupping her mons, damp with their intermingled wetness. He gives the sides of her neck a little squeeze as he tongues the rim of her ear, hard fingers between her thighs making her writhe and convulse. </p><p>She clutches the forearm caging her in, holding on where her watery legs have failed, feels the latent power of him, the implied threat of his hand, more terrifying than when he had been hammering into her. She’s astride a pacing tiger, every nerve in her body alert to its potential for destruction. </p><p>When the impact of her orgasm punches through, doubling her over, the coiled dangerous energy of his body finally dissipates. </p><p>Arms clasped around, he bends with her like bamboo leaning with the wind, strong, fluid, holding her up as she submits, defenseless, to the violence of pure pleasure.</p><p>---</p><p>Heejae walks her to her car, occasionally glancing at her and then looking away as they move together through the cold glass corridors and the elevator in silence. He extends a hand to her lower back (<i>like before</i>, she thinks) as they descend the last flight of stairs, but withdraws it before contact, as if he hadn’t just spent hours breaking her and then putting her back together with his body. </p><p>There are some things and some words that can only exist in the dark.</p><p>Geumja pauses in front of the door. </p><p>“Thank you,” she says, meeting his eyes at last. “I mean it.”</p><p>The green-tinged light of the garage, stark after the velvety dark of her office, accentuate the shadows under his eyes, the rumpled state of his usually pristine clothes. But the little half-smile he gives her in response is soft and fond and amused. <i>Like before</i>, she thinks again. </p><p>“You’re welcome, Jung Geumja. Drive safely.”</p><p>She sneaks a look at him through her rearview mirror as she pulls out of the lot. He stands, gazing after her, both hands jammed into his pockets like a schoolboy, smile muted, nakedly wistful.  </p><p>---</p><p><i>She’s always driving away first</i>, he thinks as he drives home, alone, the lights of the city painting neon streaks in the night. </p><p>He tells himself that he is content. She had needed him and he had scoured himself empty to be a vessel for her need. </p><p>Need… That was close enough to love.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My gratitude to the wicked and delightful tumblr user @saltr0se for talking me down from the heights of paranoia and for being the best squidmother. If people come after me with pitchforks, I'm sending them your way.</p><p>For *ahem* a visual aid of Heejae's worship at the altar of the hustler queen of Song &amp; Kim, please refer to Gain's music video Fxxk You.</p><p>"There are some things and some words that can only exist in the dark." was stolen from The Rise of Phoenixes, a drama that kicked me in the ribs repeatedly and left me to die in a ditch.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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